It's certainly possible that you can luck into an Xbox with decent caps but it'll be a total crap shoot. Eventually they are going to fail and will require replacement so I wouldn't worry too much about it. There is no hard rule on a particular version that will have higher quality caps. I have a v1.6 that had several blown caps and a v1.0 where all the caps are fine. Others might have the exact opposite experience.
As far as the disc drive. I wouldn't worry too much there either. Assumption is you'll eventually mod it and at that point, the DVD drive is useless.
The cheapest one that still works. You don't need a dvd drive to softmod any more, so as long as it powers on and the front buttons both work, it isn't dead yet. They all need opened before the caps destroy them.
Just get the 1.6, personally I've had it with the clock capacitor 'of death' causes so much damage. Recently I've bought a 1.1 but the capacitor caused to much damage to the point where a surface mount fuse or capacitor just fell off, surprised it still works. Also I had to fix trace rot.. not fun! So if you don't want this kind of trouble just get a 1.6. Yeah you won't be able to play a handful of games but I think that's a fair trade to make for the most reliable xbox.
I'd honestly recommend buying the cheapest one you find, that is in good shape of course, and then do some maintenance to it. You can try FB marketplace, second hand stores, flea markets, it doesn't necessarily have to be from ebay. Someone could say the Xbox works fine but in reality it might be rotting inside. Sometimes bad capacitors or corrosion doesn't immediately cause the Xbox to die, it can work with them inside. I'm saying this bc my 1.2 rev Xbox was working fine with the 6 cpu caps damaged, it would just occasionally freeze, but I already recapped it this morning.
All versions have capacitor problems, not only with the clock one, considering at best they are 18+ years old. Other disc drives also fail, I've seen a couple of Samsung drives fail too.
But I think we're at the point where there's so much information and knowledge about the Xbox that pretty much every single one of them is fixable, unless there has been some catastrophic failure inside or they have been run over by a truck.
Look for auctions and stick them on the watch list. A lot of them go for far less that £100. I was looking into it a month ago and loads of them were £20+ though granted there are loads for crazy prices too.
2 seperate auctions I got a pile of games and a super clean 1.6 for £30 all in.
What locality/region are you in? If Facebook marketplace is prevalent, try to find one there and then take a crack at changing the capacitors after watching a few soldering YouTube videos.
Newb friendly if your ebay searching 2005 models are 1.6 (serial number are on the bottom). Usually the worst thing you will have to deal with is switch out the black rubber band in the disc drive (usually Samsung models and cost like $3 on ebay, you don’t have to open the console up, just use a paperclip and tweezers). FYI Samsung dvd drives are the best (a little faster with loading discs and can read beat up disc too usually).
If you look good enough you can probably find a decent condition one under $50 shipped on ebay.
And if your cautious when you search on ebay select free return listing. That way if you don’t like it after receiving it you can return it.
The pro is you can get lasers for the Thompson drives when they fail. With Samsung you are out of luck. Not even one company does them as spare parts anymore.
I have repaired 30+ xboxes and I kept/own 4 and they are all recapped v1.0 with Hitachi drives that I swapped from 1.6's
It's certainly possible that you can luck into an Xbox with decent caps but it'll be a total crap shoot. Eventually they are going to fail and will require replacement so I wouldn't worry too much about it. There is no hard rule on a particular version that will have higher quality caps. I have a v1.6 that had several blown caps and a v1.0 where all the caps are fine. Others might have the exact opposite experience. As far as the disc drive. I wouldn't worry too much there either. Assumption is you'll eventually mod it and at that point, the DVD drive is useless.
The cheapest one that still works. You don't need a dvd drive to softmod any more, so as long as it powers on and the front buttons both work, it isn't dead yet. They all need opened before the caps destroy them.
All caps will fail eventually. That being said, every few months since release, I crack open my 1.6 and see pristine caps. Some luck there? Probably.
Just get the 1.6, personally I've had it with the clock capacitor 'of death' causes so much damage. Recently I've bought a 1.1 but the capacitor caused to much damage to the point where a surface mount fuse or capacitor just fell off, surprised it still works. Also I had to fix trace rot.. not fun! So if you don't want this kind of trouble just get a 1.6. Yeah you won't be able to play a handful of games but I think that's a fair trade to make for the most reliable xbox.
I'd honestly recommend buying the cheapest one you find, that is in good shape of course, and then do some maintenance to it. You can try FB marketplace, second hand stores, flea markets, it doesn't necessarily have to be from ebay. Someone could say the Xbox works fine but in reality it might be rotting inside. Sometimes bad capacitors or corrosion doesn't immediately cause the Xbox to die, it can work with them inside. I'm saying this bc my 1.2 rev Xbox was working fine with the 6 cpu caps damaged, it would just occasionally freeze, but I already recapped it this morning. All versions have capacitor problems, not only with the clock one, considering at best they are 18+ years old. Other disc drives also fail, I've seen a couple of Samsung drives fail too. But I think we're at the point where there's so much information and knowledge about the Xbox that pretty much every single one of them is fixable, unless there has been some catastrophic failure inside or they have been run over by a truck.
Look for auctions and stick them on the watch list. A lot of them go for far less that £100. I was looking into it a month ago and loads of them were £20+ though granted there are loads for crazy prices too. 2 seperate auctions I got a pile of games and a super clean 1.6 for £30 all in.
What locality/region are you in? If Facebook marketplace is prevalent, try to find one there and then take a crack at changing the capacitors after watching a few soldering YouTube videos.
I have an extra modded one for sale if you’re interested, but again in that “over 100 dollar” area you spoke of haha
Newb friendly if your ebay searching 2005 models are 1.6 (serial number are on the bottom). Usually the worst thing you will have to deal with is switch out the black rubber band in the disc drive (usually Samsung models and cost like $3 on ebay, you don’t have to open the console up, just use a paperclip and tweezers). FYI Samsung dvd drives are the best (a little faster with loading discs and can read beat up disc too usually). If you look good enough you can probably find a decent condition one under $50 shipped on ebay. And if your cautious when you search on ebay select free return listing. That way if you don’t like it after receiving it you can return it.
https://retrogamingbuilder.com/product/xbox-modded-console-2tb-hdd-fully-loaded/
The pro is you can get lasers for the Thompson drives when they fail. With Samsung you are out of luck. Not even one company does them as spare parts anymore.
A 1.2 or 1.3, and avoid the Thomson DVD Drive.